Norwegian serial killer Arnfinn Nesset has died, aged 89. His death at a nursing home in Norway has been confirmed by his lawyer, according to Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.
Nesset was born on a small farm in Bjugn and trained as a nurse, becoming one of the first male nurses in Norway. He worked his way up through the health system, including at a hospital in Trondheim, before being appointed manager of Orkdal old people’s and nursing home in Trøndelag.
In 1983 he was convicted of killing 22 elderly patients and attempting to kill one more while working as both nurse and manager at the Orkdal institution. The killings were linked to the use of the muscle relaxant curacit. After a major investigation and an extensive series of police interviews, the case went to trial and resulted in one of the most high-profile criminal convictions in modern Norwegian history.
Nesset received Norway’s strictest possible sentence at the time: 21 years in prison and ten years of preventive detention. He served twelve years of the prison term at Bastøy prison before being released in 1993. The preventive detention was later converted to a form of supervision outside prison.
After his release, Nesset lived a largely quiet and secluded life in a small house with a garden and a cat, and was involved in Christian activities. In later years he suffered from health problems and spent his final period in care facilities.
The Nesset case has remained one of Norway’s most debated and discussed criminal cases. It has been revisited in several media productions, including TV 2’s true crime series “Seriemorderen i Orkdal”, an NRK podcast series and a recent non-fiction book, “Den usannsynlige seriemorderen”, by author Simen Sætre. These projects have examined both the original investigation and trial, as well as Nesset’s life after his release.
With his death, one of Norway’s most infamous criminal cases comes to a formal close, while discussions about the investigation, the justice process and the full extent of what happened at Orkdal nursing home are likely to continue. According to Dagbladet, Nesset died earlier this week.
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